Highland returns to hybrid, in-person classes

By Molly Roberts
Posted 12/1/20

Highland secondary students will return to a hybrid model of education on Thursday, Dec. 3 through at least Christmas break. Elementary students will return to 100% in-person classes.

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Highland returns to hybrid, in-person classes

Posted

Highland secondary students will return to a hybrid model of education on Thursday, Dec. 3 through at least Christmas break. Elementary students will return to 100% in-person classes.

Highland first moved to online classes on Nov. 17 after the district faced a shortage of bus drivers needed to safely get students to school. Superintendent Ken Crawford applied to the state for a two-week waiver allowing classes to move online, which was approved on Nov. 18. 

Crawford presented the district’s plan to move some students back into the building during the Highland Board of Education’s work session on Nov. 30. He said the move to online instruction, while just as sudden, went better than it did last spring. 

“I think everyone has a much better grasp of how they want to approach it, how they want to do it. They can knock out all those different tasks—who does what, when, where—a lot more progressively, I believe, and a lot more fun,” Crawford said. “The staff was more prepared. I feel like they’ve got it.” 

Middle and high school principal Angela Hazelett and elementary principal Jane O’Leary both said professional development that their teachers and staff completed over the summer helped keep online learning running smoother than it did during the onset of the pandemic last spring. 

“The teachers said that they felt better prepared this time with some of the technology professional development that they’d done,” Hazelett said. “They tried different ways of doing things and thought they were very successful with those.”

Hazelett also said many teachers were pleasantly surprised by attendance rates and classroom participation during the two weeks of online learning, as well as how much easier many students could manage Google Classroom and other online learning tools. 

“I think we tend to look at [online learning] as the deficit model, that it’s not something that we want to do, but there are kids who are probably doing better during hybrid or online.”

Hazelett said many of the struggles teachers are facing now are the same ones they would be facing if students were 100% in-person, such as getting kids to turn in assignments and finish work.

Hazelett said the move back to hybrid learning, where half of the students will be on-site each day and the other half learning from home, will help students develop time management skills that will be useful in college. While some board members expressed concern that the students are not held accountable enough during their online days, Hazelett said the students are responsible for academic work during this time and should have enough to do during the days they are not in the school building. 

“To leave kids in online classes for multiple hours of the day is not productive and it’s not working their brains they way we need to,” Hazelett said. “Having them just sit online and yak at them for an hour is not good teaching.” 

Crawford said the bus driving staff is ready to return to work on Dec. 3, but in the future a lack of bus drivers, cook staff or extensive absences of teaching staff – circumstances all outside the district’s control, he noted – could push the district online again.